Saffarjaliyya

I've made a lot of Persian food over the last few years. There's 2 awesome persian supermarkets close by to where I live so it is really easy to get the necessary ingredients these days. Plus it is such a rich and full flavoured food, especially their more stewish things. I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce this to be honest I didn't really even give it a red hot go as the alternate name is Aleppo Quince and Lamb Stew. Which, I will be truthful, is a lot easier to pronounce for me. Another thing easy to pronounce is delicious, like gloriously delicious. Two of my favourite things, lamb and quince together. 

I really thought I had made this before. However, according to my friend I haven't, the last quince thing I made was a quince and pork stew. Whilst I remember it as being good, this was so much better. I did it a little differently than the recipe I found online but then I mostly do. I would highly recommend it. 

Saffarjaliyya (Aleppo Quince and Lamb Stew)

Lamb: 
1 tbsp oil
750 g lamb, diced
1 tsp bharat
1 tsp salt

2 tbsp tomato past

2 small onions, diced 

2 cloves garlic, minced (I used 6 from memory) 

7 cardamom pods

7 peppercornes

1/4 tsp whole cloves

1 cinnamon stick (I didn't have one so added a bit of ground cinnamon)

100 ml pomegranate juice

1-2 cups water

Quince: 

1 kg quinces, peeled, cored and cut into bite-sized pieces

500 ml pomegranate juice

125 ml water

50 g sugar

Quince:

In a medium saucepan, add sugar, water and pomegranate juice, heat to simmer and sugar dissolved. Add quince and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes. The quince should be soft enough to be easily pierced with a fork, but not so soft that it’s falling apart.

 Lamb:

Combine bharat, tomato paste and salt to taste and rub over lamb. Brown in batches.

Add onion to the pan and soften, add garlic and cook until fragrant. Add whole spices.

Return lamb to the pan and add remaining pomegranate juice and 1-2 cups water. Simmer until lamb is cooked through and only a small amount of liquid remains.

Stir quinces into the lamb adding more liquid if necessary and simmer further 10 – 15 minutes until heated through.

I served it with mashed potato and peas... not very Syrian of me, but it was the best I could come up with on a Monday night. It would be really good with a couscous with pomegranate seeds and herbs stirred in. 

I will definitely make it again and highly recommend you do too. 

Moroccan orange blossom and cardamom yoghurt cake

Over on Taste forums there is monthly cooking and baking competitions, if you are an Aussie pop on over and have a look at the challenges for this month. Last month it was any recipe from the Morning & Afternoon Tea collection. I wanted to make something a little different so and chose the Moroccan orange blossom and cardamom yoghurt cake. It seemed like such an unusual combination but it was wonderful. The lemony cardamom combined beautifully with the orange blossom water. It was rather sweet but I think that little bursts of pomegranate served with it would cut that a bit. I couldn't get any pomegranate so served with some chopped pistachios. I would definitely make this one again. 

Harissa Paste

Well, my thermomix arrived yesterday. Actually it arrived on Thursday but I was working and didn't get home until after the post office had closed so I had to wait until Friday, during my lunch hour, to go collect it. I brought the package home, ripped it all open and stood there admiring it for a few minutes and then I had to go back to work. When I finally got home I got a call from my consultant, who is actually about 3 - 4 hours away from me. We did a demo over the phone. I got a little confused with some things but went over it all again once I got off the phone and was more confident. I didn't end up making anything in it last night as I was mulling over my options. 

I bought some harissa paste quite some time ago from ideli.com.au. I really liked it. It had a terrific flavour to it rather than just heat. When I finished it I was at a place where they had a different type so I bought that instead of buying more from ideli as I didn't want anything else and postage was a bit expensive for one thing. The other one that I bought was just more heat than flavour. I purchased another type and it was the same. There probably was flavour it was just overpowered by the heat. I recently decided that I would try making some of my own. I found several different recipes. In the end though I decided to wait until my thermomix arrived to try it out. So when it did this was the first thing I made. 

I wasn't sure about the Neil Perry recipe that I had found since I had never made anything in the thermomix before I wasn't too sure about converting a recipe straight up. So I searched around for a tmx recipe. I found this one and decided to give it a whirl. However, I did play around with things a bit. Unfortunately I didn't write down exactly what I was doing so I don't remember exactly what I did but I will give what I can remember. One thing I would definitely do next time is to scrape down the spices and grind again. The pieces of cumin in the end results were a bit larger than I would like. 

I used banana peppers instead of regular capsicum for roasting. I still only used two and they were really large. After I blended the whole thing up it wasn't exactly what I wanted. I cooked it for a little while and then blended again. I added some olive oil and blended further. It ended up about what I wanted. I put it in a sterile bottle in the fridge. I am sure it will be put to good use. Plus now that I have done it successfully I will make some for a friend who likes harissa too.

I should have taken a better photo but this is the only one I took. 

Za'atar chicken

Happy new year to all. Welcome to 2013, hope that you all have a good one this year. 

I decided it was time to start cooking again. I have been very slack in regards to cooking and eating recently. Perhaps not so much not cooking but certainly only doing boring foods or eating antipasto stuff or sandwiches. Time to start making good, interesting and tasty food again. So, given it is the first day of 2013 I decided to start tonight. I bought a packet of za'atar some time ago from Herbie's Spices but had never used it. I had some chicken thigh fillets in the fridge. I bought them yesterday to make something but I ended up going to my friend's place for the evening. By today I couldn't remember what it was that I was going to make. 

I enjoyed this so much. Something completely different than I have been making for quite some time. The flavours were so good. Certainly nothing like I had had before. Plus so easy to whip up. It is something that I will definitely be making again. I served with a couscous salad which I will blog later.

Za'atar Chicken

4 chicken thigh fillets 

2 tbsp grapeseed oil (I would have used olive oil but I didn't have enough)

2 tbsp za'atar

Combine everything in a bowl and let sit for 30 minutes. 

Pre-heat oven to 180 C. 

Place chicken on a foil covered tray (for ease of cleaning) and bake for 25 minutes turning once.